


What heart was that?

by Dispatches (orphan_account)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Community: halfamoon, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-10
Updated: 2010-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:39:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Dispatches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://sheepfairy.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://sheepfairy.livejournal.com/"><b>sheepfairy</b></a> for the <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/halfamoon/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/halfamoon/"><b>halfamoon</b></a> fest. Prompt: "Tosh and/or Gwen, 'what is past and what is pending'." This one's mostly about Tosh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What heart was that?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a poem by Dorothy Parker.

There was a girl in her third form maths class with red hair and blue eyes whose name was... Wilson? Watkins? Something English-sounding beginning with W; she doesn't remember her first name either. She does remember being bored out of her mind one hot morning during a revision class, and leaning back in her chair and staring at the back of the girl's neck, unable to look away from the cluster of freckles just below her hairline, or the one white strap of her bra on the side where her shirt collar had slid three inches too low to hide it. She remembers the heat suddenly becoming worse, though apparently only for her, because the others weren't shifting uncomfortably in their chairs the way she was, and she remembers not knowing the answer when the teacher called on her, and everyone staring at her because that had never happened to her before.

She didn't think anything of it at the time, but with the shards of Mary's pendant still clinging to the heel of her shoe, she's thinking about it now.

*

Last New Year's Eve she kissed Owen for luck and felt a tingle shooting up her spine, even knowing it wouldn't go anywhere. She can't look at him the same way any more, and no matter how hard she tries she can't block out the image of him and Gwen together. It's a vague image, blurry and indistinct, because she's never seen them together even though she knows they're having sex with a certainty that disgusts her.

When she kissed him, she wasn't thinking about all the women he'd kissed -- and men, perhaps? He's never told her but she has her suspicions. She wasn't thinking about the past at all. She wasn't _thinking_.

She can't stop thinking now. Hands are clasping in her mind, lips pressing against skin, muscles clenching and relaxing, and none of them are hers.

*

She doesn't ask herself if she loves Tommy. "Now" and "then" are all mixed up in her mind, which seems right: they're mixed up in reality, too. This thing, this... attraction, affection, whatever... is one of those things that's not supposed to happen: he's either ten years too young or seventy years too old, or both. With her luck, probably both.

And yet.

_I'd do anything for you,_ he says, and her heart throbs painfully.

*

For days afterwards, the others tiptoe around her, their eyes gentle, their voices soft. She wants to tell them that it's all right, she's fine, she doesn't need them to be any kinder than usual -- but she likes it; it's a change from before, when Lisa died and Mary died and Diane left and Rhys died and there was no kindness to be found, only stiff discomfort and an anger with nowhere to go. This time she's had her heart broken again, but she knows now, as she didn't then, that she'll recover.

She glances over at Jack in an idle moment and thinks _this must be how he feels all the time_. Before she's even completed the thought in her head he turns to look at her: a long, serious, assessing glance; then he nods, and turns back to his work.

That's when she knows for sure that she's going to be just fine.

[end]


End file.
